However she is not just a political red, she is also a green. When she took office, she stated that addressing climate change was an urgent priority and stated she wanted to establish an independent Climate Commission to come up with mitigation programs. As part of her confidence and supply agreement with the Green Party of New Zealand she made their leader James Shaw Minister for Climate Change. One of his first actions as a Minister was to declare that New Zealand would accept climate refugees.

The early indications are that New Zealand could be headed down the same path that Australia has been on the past decade by introducing economically destructive climate change policies. These have given Australia the highest electricity prices in the world and left us in a situation where we are preparing for a summer of blackouts with zero change to earth’s temperature.

Jacinda Ardern’s most recent statement on climate change at the APEC summit in Vietnam should be of serious alarm to New Zealanders. Ardern stated that ‘climate change is the greatest challenge facing this generation’. Australians will recall Kevin Rudd stating in 2007 that climate change was ‘the great moral challenge of our generation’. This was the beginning of Australia’s climate madness that Ardern appears to what to emulate across the Tasman.

One could say that New Zealand is on a ten-year policy delay with Australia, in 2007 we also voted out an economically responsible government and replaced it with a high taxing, spending and intervening government which to this day we are still paying the price for.

Australia should be a lesson on how to not conduct energy policy, not a blueprint. Sadly climate change is just one aspect of Ardern’s agenda that will see the living standards of New Zealanders eroded, and she is just getting started. Moral crusades from our political leaders never end well, an Ardern’s mission to save us all from catastrophic climate change will be a catastrophe all by itself.